I play american football for around 8 months of the year and I'd like to have a go at powerlifting sometime in the future. I'll add in some body measurements in a few days which will be updated every month or so.

At the moment, I'm following a program called the Texas Method which consists of 3 workouts a week. (1) Volume (2) Recovery (3) Intensity. I suppose I should mention I sometimes use an 8 or 9 day week as a lifting week, depending on how I feel.

I'll also post up some vids when I get a chance to make the thread a bit more colourful and I'll continue to do so as the months progress.

Happy enough with the squats although they were tough. I buried myself on the final rep of the last set and couldn't come out of the hole. Pretty ghey to fail on the final rep .

Averaged about 5-8 mins between the working sets iirc. For the Texas Method, I started off at around 135 x 5x5 adding 5kg every week. I'm pretty close to my limit now and will be deloading very soon on squats.

Military Press was awful seeing as I got 60 5x5 pretty handily last time. Everything else was pretty standard. I'll add more weight to the other exercises next time except for the chins.

I find it adds seriously to my DOMS and can sometimes even mean a slight strain, particularly in the groin/ham/glute areas. Any experience of this and thoughts on my experience of it?

Cant say I have any experience of strains from stretching tbh. The areas you're describing though would lead me to believe that it COULD be down to a tightness or 'knots' in the muscle.

I'm not sure if you do any foam rolling to benefit from myofasical release but it's defo something you should look into. For example, I'll spend about 10 mins before bed loosening the muscles I've worked in the gym on a foam roller and a tennis ball. The tennis ball is really good for loosening any trigger points in the glutes.

I'd just like to mention that I'm not an expert though. Although I have been lifting on and off for 10 years or so, I have no actual fitness qualifications. Might be a good idea to ask Bubbleking to get a professional opinion.

Oh and in terms of DOMS, I like to add about 15-20 grams of l-glutamine into my post-workout shake which is an excellent way of keeping DOMS down to a minimum.

Here's some vids as promised. The bands on my knees are Tommy Kono knee bands. They are made of neoprene and simply keep my knees nice and warm to aid in the lubrication of the joint. I do some variation of squats each time I'm in the gym so knee health is of upmost importance.

Those videos were taken around 3 or 4 months ago iirc. I've changed a few things on both lifts since then. Now, I'm trying my best to move the bar a bit lower down my back for the squats so I'll be able to lift more. My shoulder flexibility sucks and I still need to work on it.

With regards the deadlift, my hips rise a bit too much for my liking before the bar starts to move off the floor so I've been working on that also. Finally, I now hold my breath on the deadlift before I get into the starting position as opposed to when I'm down there if that makes sense.

I might as well add that I've found taking videos of your lifts as an invaluable learning tool and I cannot recommend it enough.

The Romaleos are unreal for squatting in. I thought it would take a while for me to adapt to the different mechanics in the shoes but it felt really natural. They'll add at least 10kg to my previous max so 190kg x 1 should be there next week.

The military press was straightforward. The exercise is a bit hit and miss for me. Hopefully, I can get a bit more consistent.

Deadlifts were great too. There was definitely another rep in the tank anyway.

Warm-down: In a rush, will do my stretching at home.
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Again, thank you Romaleos. Squats were much easier than last week. Plus my depth is pretty awesome, way below parallel.

Benching was fine. The very last rep was a grinder but I'd expect that.

The six sets of three on the power cleans were tough. I only took a minutes break in between them as I was running out of time so I was very happy to get all of the reps.

Assistance stuff was fine. I dont do dips on the same week as the bench press as I think that would be overkill.

On a side note, I ran into a friend of mine who used to do powerlifting. Got some tips off him on how to do/get into postion for low bar squats. It was really helpful. I tried them with 60kg and I could really feel the difference compared to high bar. The weight felt ridiculously light although my wrists were complaining. I'll keep doing high bar for now but I'll definitely throw in some low bar technique work at the end of most sessions so that I can get more comfortable with them and eventually make the switch.